MOR’ PROBLEMS
Struggling Nets can’t handle Morant & Memphis, suffer third straight loss ahead of Kai comeback
Ja Morant was the best player on the Barclays Center floors on Monday night.
That should tell you all you need to know about the Nets’ 118-104 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies: Despite a Brooklyn roster headlined by two available future Hall of Famers, a Hall of Fame point guard playing head coach, and a supporting cast laden with household-name role players, the Nets have suffered their third loss in a row.
And each loss has been more embarrassing than the last. First, Sixers star Joel Embiid waved the
Nets off the Barclays Center floors. Then the unrecognizably shorthanded Los Angeles Clippers handed the Nets a loss with Reggie Jackson and Eric Bledsoe as their best available players. Finally, Morant’s masterpiece of a performance stole the show in a game where both Kevin Durant and James Harden came up short.
Morant finished with 36 points on 14-of-22 shooting from the field to go with eight assists on the night and exploded for a one-handed tomahawk in the third quarter that got fans in ‘The Clays’ off their feet for the only time all night.
Yet if Monday night’s result was purely decided by Morant’s magic, the Nets may have gotten a better night’s sleep.
That’s not on the table any time soon, not the way these so-called championship contenders have played these last three games. The Grizzlies built a lead as large as 28 points, out-rebounded the Nets by 29 and turned Nets’ fans restless clamors for a better effort into boos at the end of the third quarter entering the fourth.
“I think just defense. Defense hasn’t been great,” Nets head coach Steve Nash pinpointed as the root deficiency of each of Brooklyn’s last three losses. “Part of it is: We can’t panic. It’s been a crazy period where largely 80 to 90% of our team got COVID, transition through we’re coming out of that, and it was just a big stop to the momentum of the season.
“So let’s not overreact, but that was embarrassing tonight. We got our butts kicked, and we got to do a lot better to get back to the standard that we played at before the interruption.”
Brooklyn’s performance, or lack thereof, substantiated ESPN’s latest NBA power rankings: Maybe the Nets aren’t as good as their no-longer conference-best record would indicate. Maybe they aren’t a top-five team after all (ESPN ranked Brooklyn sixth before the loss to the Grizzlies). Maybe they’re championship pretenders posing as contenders.
One thing’s for sure: The Nets’ starters and veterans were posing as players who wanted to win Monday night’s matchup. The spry Grizzlies out-ran and thoroughly out-rebounded the Nets, nearly doubling their total on the glass all night.
Meanwhile, seven different Grizzlies players recorded at least five rebounds. With no LaMarcus Aldridge (foot), the Nets lacked interior strength and could not get a stop at the rim. They also struggled to score with a lack of shooters available on the roster.
Joe Harris’ absence due to ankle surgery has exposed the Nets’ lack of depth in perimeter shooters. Without Kyrie Irving for home games, and without Harris for about two more weeks, Patty Mills is the team’s third-best perimeter scorer behind Kevin Durant and James Harden.
But Mills had an off night – 0-of-5 from downtown and a donut from the field – Durant shot just 8-of-24 and Harden shot only 5-of-14 from the field. Brooklyn’s co-stars combined for just 45 points on the night. One game after airing his teammates out in the loss to the Clippers, Durant took responsibility for his team’s flat performance
against the Grizzlies.
But he also pinpointed the Nets’ slow starts as a reason for their consecutive losses in this stretch. The Grizzlies jumped out to a 21-10 first-quarter lead one game after the Clippers took a 21-11 advantage in the opening period as well. The Sixers also jumped out to a 10-2 first-quarter lead in their eight-point win on Dec. 30.
“Yeah, just the starts, bad starts. That’s just good momentum for them,” Durant said. “Tonight, I think I just took too many shots to start the game, and I think I took too many shots in that first half. Think I threw my team off a bit trying to find my rhythm. I felt like I got away from the offensive gameplan a little bit, and I think that might have hurt us more than anything.”
The Nets never bounced back from that deficit until it was too late: Staring down a 28-point hole, Nash made his best Tom Thibodeau impression and pulled his starters in favor of a bench unit of Jevon Carter, Brown and rookies Cam Thomas, David Duke Jr. and Day’Ron Sharpe. That unit cut Memphis’ massive lead down to just 10 before the Grizzlies went back to their starters.
“I loved the young guys and what they bring to our team,” said Durant. “You’ve got to give them credit.”
The Nets have questions to answer, and they need those answers fast. Was Memphis’ ability to torch them inside a byproduct of Aldridge’s absence, or are the Nets always going to be BBQ chicken when playing against dynamic guards? And are they always going to be a team that plays down to their opponent, or will they snap out of this funk and play like the NBA champions they claim to be?
Or maybe, on the eve of Irving’s return to the rotation, the Nets need all three of their stars to truly compete for a championship. Their three-game losing streak looks less like a squad angling to be the last team standing and more like a team on the ropes midway through the season.
“That’s always good, to have new energy, but more than anything he’s an efficient player who can put pressure on the defense and a good defender, as well,” Durant said of Irving. “So we’re just looking forward to what he brings as a player and as far as the energy you got to bring your own energy as an individual and bring that to the collective and we’ll see what happens, but (we’ve got to) just keep building.”